Chuck Ross: Bruce Ohr Testified He Had Told His Colleagues About His Off-the-Books Work With Christopher Steele, But Hid It From His Superiors

"By the book."

* DOJ official Bruce Ohr testified before Congress on Tuesday about his contacts with Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier

* One mystery surrounding Ohr and Steele was who he told at the Justice Department about his interaction with Steele

* Ohr testified that he told his peers, but not his superiors, about the dossier-related contacts

Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr told Congress earlier this week that he informed half a dozen FBI and Justice Department officials about his contacts with dossier author Christopher Steele and opposition researcher Glenn Simpson.

Sources familiar with Ohr’s testimony before the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees told The Daily Caller News Foundation that Ohr informed Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page about his interactions with Steele and Simpson. He also informed Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann about his dossier-related work.

Weissmann is now serving as right-hand man to Robert Mueller at the special counsel's office.

Ohr testified that he informed his Justice Department peers, but not his superiors, about his contacts with Steele and Simpson. One of the superiors kept out of the loop was former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Ohr said he was demoted as assistant deputy attorney general in December because he failed to tell Yates and other top officials about his dossier interactions.

Republicans have sought an interview with Ohr to find out why he maintained contact with Steele even after the FBI decided to cut ties with the former British spy just before the 2016 election. The FBI said in applications for spy warrants against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page that the bureau dropped Steele as an informant because he had unauthorized contacts with the media. Despite that, Ohr met and spoke with Steele numerous times through May 2017. Ohr debriefed the FBI at least 12 times following his post-election contacts with Steele.

Weissmann’s contact with Ohr about the dossier is significant because of the mutual interest that Weissmann and Fusion’s Simpson had in former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, has told Congress that Fusion GPS investigated Manafort's links to Russian oligarchs as part of its anti-Trump project.

...

As chief of the Justice Department’s criminal fraud division, Weissmann was investigating Manafort even before the special counse's team was formed.

...

Weissmann has also attracted criticism from Republicans because of his overt support for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He has donated heavily to Democratic political candidates and attended Clinton’s 2016 election night party in New York City.

Ohr's wife was also a focus of Tuesday’s closed-door interview.

Republicans pressed Ohr about how his wife, a Russia expert named Nellie Ohr, came to work for Fusion GPS.

Ohr testified that Fusion approached his wife for a job and that she began working for the research firm in late 2015. California GOP Rep. Darrell Issa said Ohr testified that his wife was paid $44,000 by Fusion GPS. As TheDCNF has reported, Ohr did not disclose his wife’s Fusion income on his annual ethics disclosure form.

Perkins Coie, the law firm for the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, paid Fusion GPS more than $1 million for the Trump-Russia project. Fusion paid Steele nearly $170,000 for his work.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican who helped question Ohr, said that he believes that Fusion GPS chose Nellie Ohr so that the firm could leverage her husband's senior position at the DOJ.

"Why did they need Bruce Ohr? Why did Fusion...want to work with Bruce Ohr?" he said in an interview on Fox News Tuesday night.

"My guess is, because he is associate deputy attorney general ... that just adds heft and weight to what they were trying to do about this whole dossier, which was the key to everything," he added.

The special counsel’s office declined to comment on Weissmann’s links to Ohr.

I'm curious if this testimony has anything to do with the alleged discrepancies between Ohr's testimony and the testimony of Lisa Page and Glenn Simpson.

Reps. Ratcliffe and Jordan note that none of this was disclosed on FISA applications:

Here's a FoxNews report and video of Jim Jordan talking about this stuff, which I'm sure David French will get too as soon has he's done reading The Atlantic, the Racist New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC's website, and other magazines and newspapers he hopes to work for once he's booted out of National Review for alienating their readers.

I think there might be some kind of "huge knowledge gap" between what engaged conservatives know about this matter and what the #FakeConservativesWhoOnlyReadProgMedia know about it.

posted by Ace of Spades at 02:07 PM

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